The Shape I Found You In
by icepixel
Summary: "For all that Dr. Megan Hunt is the most unlikable person working in the Philadelphia Medical Examiners' office, Peter likes her." Megan/Peter friendship.


**Notes:** Set between 1.02 and 1.03. Title shamelessly stolen from the Girlyman song of the same name.

* * *

><p>For all that Dr. Megan Hunt is the most unlikeable person working in the Philadelphia Medical Examiners' office, Peter likes her. In the six months that he's known her, he's asked himself why that might be several times. The best answer he's come up with is that he likes a challenge.<p>

Even though he's in the middle of an autopsy, he can't help smiling. Megan would probably appreciate being referred to as a challenge.

Unfortunately, it hasn't made either of their jobs easy. After the way she poked her nose—followed by her head, shoulders, and pretty much entire body—into his and Sam's investigations, he thinks Bud Morris might actually hate her, which is going to make Kate's plan of molding them into a team rather difficult to carry out. But maybe worthwhile, too. Peter knows where Bud's coming from; he remembers how many cases and how little time a cop has in a day, and wanting to clear out the ones that look open-and-shut in order to concentrate on the stickier assignments is only natural. Bud, though, is a little too eager to cut corners for Peter's taste, and he appreciates that Megan doesn't quit until she's sure of what happened to the victim on her table.

Of course, the next time she asks him, all wide eyes and half-baked theories, to stay until ten o'clock on a Friday night poking at someone's internal organs, he might have to revise his opinion on her dedication. There's only so much of it even he can take.

"Hand me a number four blade," she says, breaking his train of thought. She holds out her hand. When it doesn't magically appear in her palm, she finally looks up at him. He raises his eyebrow, and she narrows her eyes in response. "Pretty please," she says.

With a smirk, he gives her the blade.

It's not even her relentless pursuit of truth that bothers people the most when interacting with Megan; it's the complete lack of finesse she applies to her bullheadedness. Apparently the old saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar never made much of an impression on her. Since he spends most of his day with her, by all rights she should irritate him as much as, maybe more than, the collective rest of the Philadelphia criminal justice community, but in fact her inability to understand living humans as opposed to dead ones is kind of endearing.

He's definitely going to find a scalpel embedded in his back if he ever lets on to her that he thinks so.

It's like somewhere in those eighteen-hour days she used to work—still works, sometimes—she forgot how to talk to people, how to see them as more than a collection of blood vessels and nerve cells. Watching her talk, or maybe the better word is bark, at Bud and Kate and especially Curtis is kind of like his first time watching an autopsy: both disturbing and riveting at the same time. Her saving grace is that, however hard it is for her, she wants to get better. From the way her voice breaks when she talks about never seeing her daughter, he can tell how much Megan cares about the girl, how desperately she wants to be a part of her life. Granted, he'd had to drag it out of her, but at least he knows the desire there. That, as much as his admiration for her work ethic, and as much as the fact that she's his partner, is what makes him happy to go to bat for her with Kate and the police department. Underneath the bossy, cranky smartass, there's a person he thinks he'd really like to know, and he'd like it if she were employed here long enough for that to happen.

Her scalpel suddenly clatters to the floor. "Damn it!" Megan curses, clutching her right hand in her left, apparently trying to squeeze the numbness out of her fingers. He wonders if it actually helps, or if it just makes her feel less helpless.

He bends and retrieves the knife, placing the handle in her palm, which she holds out to accept it, the attack apparently over. "Thanks," she says, a little ruefully.

"No problem." He recalls something she said in the car a couple weeks ago. "I've got your back."


End file.
